


Deleted Scenes from X of Swords: Marauders 14 (The Dinner Party)

by NotQuiteHydePark



Category: Excalibur (Comic), New Mutants (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Bad Puns, Ballroom Dancing, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Meta, Multi, Polyamory Negotiations, Puns & Word Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27421627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotQuiteHydePark/pseuds/NotQuiteHydePark
Summary: Pogg Ur-Pogg is lit.
Relationships: Brian Braddock/Opal Luna Saturnyne, Logan/Ororo Munroe
Kudos: 11





	Deleted Scenes from X of Swords: Marauders 14 (The Dinner Party)

Jamie Braddock, dressed in a suit the Joker discarded in 1975, stands in the Crooked Market, surrounded by trays and bins of glossy whole fish and shellfish and traders in chef’s whites. “Ready your orders now,” he says. “Be quick but be precise.”

A purplish-red lobster claw looms all the way to the left, in the foreground. It’s Bill the Lobster! “There you are,” Jamie says. “Welcome to the Crooked Market and to the environs of the Starlight Citadel. Let’s get you reunited with your old friends.”

“Not sure they’re my friends,” Bill thinks back at Jamie. A thought bubble rises lazily above a tray of lavender catfish.

The Mad King seizes a hunk of edible seaweed and invertebrates from the next stall over. “Keep your fronds close,” he quips, “and your anemones closer.”

Bill the Lobster groans.

*

Logan, written by Benjamin Percy, flexes and grimaces on a faraway balcony. “I $%# hate parties,” he muses. He appears to be drinking beer, or mead, out of a flowerpot. “These days they won’t even let me show up with a cigar.”

Outside the gates of the citadel, a variety of champions gather. Centered is Pogg Ur-Pogg, a giant crocodile who always speaks in couplets. “Pogg Ur-Pogg’s throat is quenched,” he growls. “Bring forth libations so it be drenched.”

“Pogg, darling,” says the Summoner, “I suspect we’re having problems translating from the Crocodilian. Do you mean that your thirst is not yet quenched?”

“Pogg Ur-Pogg despises prescriptive grammar,” the giant lizard exclaims. “Who would correct Pogg Ur-Pogg shall be mauled with a hammer!”

Storm meets Death, who looks exactly like the Egyptian god Anubis, and War, who looks exactly like the DC hero Firestorm in a black bodysuit. They banter. War tries to warn Death against flirting with Storm, but to no avail: Ororo, acknowledging Death’s interest in her, takes an electric blue hibiscus out of her green cocktail glass and places it between Death’s ears, where Death’s hair would be if Death had any hair. 

“You’re going to be a problem, aren’t you?” Ororo says. “Just like the last twenty supervillains who decided they wanted to sleep with me. You’re not even the first god. I preferred Loki, to tell the truth. Apparently I’m too sexy for my antagonists.”

Surely Logan would understand. Storm approaches him. “I ain’t in the mood, Ororo,” he growls, still written by Benjamin Percy. His deep, deep voice resounds throughout the castle.

Across the patio, Bei the Blood Moon approaches Doug Ramsey. “Avert thy eyes, soft boy,” he says. “I wanna destroy you.”

“Well I wanna be an anglepoise lamp,” Doug responds. “Doesn’t mean it will happen. Anyway stop calling me a softboi. I’m not even sure you know what a softboi is.” Doug brings out his cell phone, ready to text Bei the Blood Moon a link to the celebrated Instagram account “Beam Me Up Softboi.” Bei spills his strangely foamy drink.

Back at the balcony, Storm tells Logan, “I know what you’re thinking.”

“I know you know,” Logan growls, still written by Benjamin Percy.

*

A few panels later, it’s time to dine. Bald, bearded, elderly-looking figures with stances like shrug emoji invite the champions in, while talking parakeets overhead give directions: “To the Hall of Fallen Banners!”

“We’re in a Hulk comic now?” Doug asks. “Please stop,” Illyana says.

One of the bald men offers the champions cards: Tarot cards, place cards, lottery tickets, possibly all three at once. Illyana looks unimpressed. “What do I need your literature for?” she challenges the bald man.

“The central function of reading imaginative literature,” Doug responds shakily, “is to make you realize that other people act on moral convictions different from your own. What is more, it has been thought from Aeschylus to Ibsen that a literary work might present a current moral problem, and to some extent alter the judgment of those who appreciate it by making them see the case as a whole.”

Pogg Ur-Pogg nods sagely. “Pogg Ur-Pogg knows you are quoting William Empson!” he yells. “Among literary critics, he is a gemstone!”

“”Well, Magik Uh-Magik couldn’t give a damn,” Illyana swears. “I dunno what this Tarot stuff means.” She’s obviously bluffing, given how much time she’s spent in the study of magical practice with Dr. Strange, but it suits her purposes to come across as a dumb blonde with a big sword. And she does have a big sword.

“Pogg Ur-Pogg hopes you will serve fennel-and-onion hash!” the giant crocodile yells. “Pogg Ur-Pogg’s favorite poet is Ogden Nash!”

*

Logan, still written by Benjamin Percy, spends a page and a half using his lovely and almost impossibly deep growl to persuade Brian Braddock that he should go to bed with Saturnyne. What if Brian’s the softboi? Doug muses.

“You’ve let your commitment to patriarchy endanger your teammates before,” says Logan, “but this is the absolute worst. You seriously value your commitment to monogamy more than you value your teammates’ lives? I’m the best there is at what I do, but apparently talking people down from shortsighted macho grandstanding is not what I do.” Logan lets out a very deep sigh.

Then Betsy Braddock takes the burly Wolverine aside. “Logan, he’s just not that into her,” she explains. “And if Saturyne takes him into her bed and he can’t…. you know… that’s only going to make the whole tournament situation worse. The marriage vows are a good excuse.”

“I am at least 150 years old,” Logan mutters, still written by Benjamin Percy, “and I did not see that one coming.”

“Neither will Saturnyne,” Betsy says. “That’s the whole problem.”

*

As the appetizers circulate, lllyana puts her agenda into effect. She’s trying to find handedness and therefore fighting styles for all of Arakko’s champions. “War is right-handed,” she says to Gorgon. To Illyana’s left, Pogg Ur-Pogg is devouring the collected works of Lord Byron. “That chonky dinosaur is going to be a problem,” she says. “He simply knows too much.”

“Pogg Ur-Pogg has little time for antics,” the crocodile, who is not a dinosaur, explains. “Pogg Ur-Pogg’s favorite poets are British Romantics!”

Several pages later, Storm immerses herself in a whirlpool and sinks below a perhaps illusionary sea in order to do some ballroom dancing with Death, who tries to sweep her off her planted feet.

“I’ve been reading @ClaremontRun,” Death whispers in a sexy manner, “and I’ve noticed that you have never died. Most of the other A-list mutant have tasted death many times…. in many ways…. but not you.”

“You’re wrong,” Storm says, dipping her jackal-headed dancing partner while jellyfish float by. “I know Death. I have been dancing with you my entire life… first as a girl living on the streets, and later as leader of the X-Men… a role that taught me how to sway Death,” she continues, literally swaying Death while dipping him low in an elegant old-school move.

Clambering over the sea floor in the shadow of an octopus, Bill the Lobster applauds Storm’s dance moves, while noticing the visual pun.

Meanwhile in the main chamber, the entrees are served. Saturnyne, fur shoulder pads bristling softly, rises to invite her guests to their plates. “Logan, I can tell when a mind is burdened,” she coos. “There’s no reason for you to hold your tongue.”

Logan, still written by Benjamin Percy, puts down his dish of lark’s tongue, scowls at the pun, and rises to speak, his voice so sweet, so low. “I ain’t a man of many words,” he says, “but I’ve sure been using ‘em a lot in this here book so far, and now I’ll say what I think. This tournament of swords thing seems like fun, or it would if it weren’t gonna get some of us killed, but you know what’s not fun at all? You know what disturbs me?”

Standing while the other guests sit, Logan is ,as usual, the shortest warrior in the room. People forget how short he’s supposed to be. 

“You know what disturbs me?” he goes. “The way the whole conflict gets framed in this issue, and maybe in this whole here X of Swords thing, as the fault of a sexually voracious woman who probably should not hold the power she holds, like you’re an Ice Queen type who just needs to bed the right man. I’ve been around for at least 150 years and I am so tired of that villain motivation. It worked out pretty well during Inferno but I’m thoroughly sick of it now. I’d love it if Captain Monogamy over here would just agree to go to bed with you, but he’s not gonna, and I can’t make him, and apparently that’s why you’re hellbent on killing us all, and I call BS on that plot point. Why do these things never change?”

“Cishet male writers,” Illyana whispers to Doug Ramsey at the other end of the table. "Compulsory heterosexuality." Doug nods.

“Death is the great change,” answeres Saturnyne, “and everything dies, baby, that’s a fact. But everything that dies someday comes back.”

“Put your makeup on, get your hair real pretty,” Logan sings, still in the low voice of Benjamin Percy, as if they had all heard the song before. “I’ll meet you tonight in Atlantic City.”

“I don’t gamble,” says Saturnyne, confused. “And I’m not courting you. I’m still into Brian Braddock.”

“Lady,” says Logan, “those are some famous last words!” His muscles flexed to Liefeldian proportions, Logan stabs Saturyne through the ribs, his bloody claws protruding from her back. “I’ve been trapped once again in a plot where I have to punish a powerful overtly sexual woman for disrupting the monogamous patriarchal order by exercising her sexy power, and what I do isn’t very nice!”

Far away, Bill the Lobster starts a debate with a squid about Springsteen’s best five songs.


End file.
